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Dennis Kucinich's Seattle Visit: I Was There

The banquet room at the Everett Holiday Inn was filled to capacity with Kucinich fans from across Snohomish County, all proud members of the progressive, grassroots Mutual UFO Network (MUFON). I donned my official Kucinich Headgear and got as close to the front as I could.

Famous talk radio host Art Bell, speaking before a packed house of close to 14 people, introduced the man of the hour.

"Atlantians! Alpha Centaurians! Altairians, Andromedains, Arcturians, Cassiopaeans, Reptilians, Hybrids, Iguaniods, Insectiods, Lacertians, Lemurians, Luciferians, Lyrans, Neonates, Nordics, Pleiadans, Raelians, Son's of Darkness, Son's of Light, Ancients, Ultraterrestrials, Uranthans, Vampurae, Vegans, Winged Draconians, Zeta Riticulans, and Jehovah's Witnesses! Greetings, and welcome to the first annual MUFON UFO Symposium and Get Out the Vote rally. Allow me to introduce our guest of honor: the man with the vision, the courage, and the foreign policy experience to stave off an interplanetary war with the Greys, the next President of the United States, Dennis Kucinich!"

Kucinich hesitantly stepped from behind a large blue curtain to a standing ovation. A man of small, frail stature, he seemed somewhat dwarfed by the giant, pyramid-shaped podium before him, but this in in no way diminished my opinion of the great man. After all, Lenin was short, too.

He tapped the microphone with his hand, looking somewhat confused.

"Uhhh...MUFON?" he spoke, his deep, booming voice resonating throughout the room. "There must be some mistake...I was told this was a MoveOn.org event."

"DubelmoHchugh q'Sagh!!" the crowd cheered in traditional Klingon, delighted with the joke. At last, a candidate with a sense of humor!

"I must confess," he continued, "I don't really have anything prepared for this uhhh...*ahem* group - why don't we just skip to the question-and-answer portion of the evening? Anyone have a question?"

A man with thick, coke-bottle glasses stood up in the front row. "Ever see Gillian Anderson naked?" he asked.

Kucinich stared at him. "Ummm...no."

"Not even in the episode where she got the tattoo on her ass?"

Art Bell snatched the microphone from Kucinich's hands. "Ladies and gentlemen, must I remind you again that David Duchovny will not be speaking tonight? This is Dennis Kucinich, democrat presidential candidate. Please ask questions relevent to his campaign."

A morbidly obese man with a tinfoil hat raised his hand. "What do you plan to do about the Roswell saucer crash, Koonichick? Keep it covered it up, like every other president since Truman?"

Kucinich fumbled with his fingers, the sign of a true leader. "Well uhhhh...I will repeal Bush's repressive tax cuts for the rich, and uhhhh...raise the mininum wage to thirty dollars an hour so the average American doesn't have to work 4 jobs to feed his family!"

"WELL PLAYED!" I shouted. What an impressive answer!

Kucinich pointed to a severely crosseyed woman with her hand raised.

"Sasquatch!" she screamed. "In the summer of 1982, I was impregnated by a Sasquatch just outside of Medford, Oregon!"

"I'm glad you brought that up," Kucinich volleyed, "because as president, I will appoint Supreme Court justices who will uphold Roe v. Wade, support a woman's constitutional right to choose, and actually perform abortions in their chambers during recesses! Next question?"

Good golly, the man was on FIRE! He dodged every bullet the audience shot at him, from Raelian mind control to satanic goat mutilations in Ecuador.

"My dog tells me things!" a gentleman yelled from the back. "He tells me about the shadow people living in my sock drawer. What do the shadow people want with my socks? That's what I wanna know."

"Excellent question," Kucinich fired back, "Quite simply, I will eliminate the Department of War and replace it with the Department of Peace. Then I will withdraw all troops from Iraq, turn over control of the U.S. military to the U.N., and beg the world community to forgive us for our unilateral, imperialist sins!"

The crowd went nuts! There was simply no stopping the man.

"9/11!" I shouted. "Tell them about 9/11, Dennis!"

"Bush staged 9/11!" he yelled over the roar of the audience. "Saddam was a CIA patsy! Captain Janeway killed JFK!"

This was the man we'd all been waiting for, the messiah who would free us from the chains of right wing opression and lead us into the promised land!

Suddenly, right when he had us in the palm of his hand, two large men in dark suits grabbed Kucinich and spirited him out of the building.

"Good god!" Art Bell screamed. "It's the Men in Black! Run for your lives!"

"Wait!" I yelled back at him. "Those weren't Men in Black! Those were Kucinich's delegates!"

But it was too late. The crowd panicked and stampeded toward the door, nearly trampling a cardboard cut-out of James "Scotty" Doohan under their orthopedic shoes. The room empited in a matter of seconds, and as quickly as the evening began, it was over.

What a bittersweet, yet historical evening. I saw the greatest statesman sense Jerry Brown speaking before a throng of his admirers, but he left before I could offer him my official endorsement.

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The organization now has more than 3,000 members worldwide, with a majority of its membership base situated in the continental United States. MUFON operates a worldwide network of regional directors for field investigation of reported UFO sightings, holds an annual international symposium and publishes the monthly MUFON UFO Journal.

The stated mission of MUFON is the scientific study of UFOs for the benefit of humanity through investigations, research and education. Along with CUFOS (the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies) and FUFOR (the Fund for UFO Research), MUFON is part of the UFO Research Coalition, a collaborative effort by the three main UFO investigative organizations in the US whose goal is to share personnel and other research resources, and to fund and promote the scientific study of the UFO phenomenon. Currently, there is an observatory to be built at the Audubon Estate of The Legendary Danny O'Doul in Wemphis on Long Island, New York, from which a high-powered, computer-driven telescope will peruse the skies tracking in real-time all UFO activities in the very-active skies of and around The Five Towns of Long Island, adjacent to JFK Int'l Airport.